Friday, July 9, 2010

Unscientific, Unnecessary Road Humps

Bangalore: The unscientifically built road humps across the city was something Bangaloreans were complaining about for long, as they not only posed a threat to the spines of motorists, but also to vehicles. Finally, on Thursday, it seemed that the pain was felt by the law makers too, as members of the legislative council raised concerns over the killer humps.

Home minister VS Acharya stated that the badly made road humps were responsible for several fatal accidents and said that he would write to the city traffic police and other authorities to clear the unscientifically built ones.

Citing the road humps in the Vidhana Soudha campus itself, Acharya said, “When vehicles pass over these humps, the spine is hurt, and speeding vehicles often meet with accidents if they fail to slow down at these humps.

The government builds good highways like the one between Bangalore and Mysore, but also constructs such unscientific speed breakers.”

He added that he had to write to the deputy commissioners of four districts along that stretch to clear the road off the humps, and said that the 60-km stretch between Bellary and Hospet taluks alone had 90 speed breakers that were unnecessary.

Acharya said as per the Indian Road Congress (IRC), an ideal road hump should be four inches high and 11.5 feet wide, and added, “However, not many speed breakers are designed as per specifications.”

Following a question raised by a council member, Abdul Azeem, on the statistics of accidents caused due to road humps, Acharya said there was no record of it, but that several road accidents were caused by speed breakers.

Council member RV Venkatesh also cited the death of Congress worker Gunashekar, who died in a road mishap on Wednesday night that was caused due to an unscientifically constructed speed breaker.

Acharya added that at spots where speed breakers were necessary, the government was placing rumblers to caution vehicles of a road hump ahead.

It may be recalled that the Lokayukta had earlier submitted a report to the state government on the illegal speed breakers mushrooming in the city and other towns.The report said that Bangalore alone had over 1,000 illegal road humps and recommended their removal. (Rohit BR/DNA) also in (TheHindu)